November 20, 2013

Controlling inexpensive RC Quadcopters with Arduino

Over the last few months the purchase price of remote-controlled helicopters and quadcopters has dropped quite considerably, firmly placing them into the "hackable" category. Normally hacking into inexpensive RC devices would simply involve cracking open the remote controller and connecting the Arduino's digital outputs to the buttons with a little extra circuitry.

However for the quadcopter, Nikolaj Møbius discovered that the control was via a digital RF module - and using an Arduino he determined the protocol used for data transmission to the copter. With that information, he removed the transmitter from the original controller and added it to a protoshield - enabling full Arduino and thus PC control of the quadcopter. An example of this in action is shown in the following video:

 

That's pretty awesome, so head over to the project page for more information on this great hack. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well. 

Have you been reading about Arduino, but not sure where to start? Then order one of our Experimenter's Kit for Arduino: 

The package includes a wide variety of parts, sensors and modules including: a servo motor, lights, buttons, switches, sound, sensors, breadboard, wires and more. Furthermore a Freetronics Eleven Arduino-compatible board is included to make this an extensive hobby experimenter, inventor and starter kit. However we don't leave you alone to figure it all out, included is a great project and instruction booklet, plus access to a supporting web page and software examples. In other words - this is everything you need to get started for a fun range of electronics and Arduino related projects! So to get started or for more information and to order, check out the product page.

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